Absorbent articles, such as diapers, incontinence garments, training pants, sanitary napkins, panty liners, and the like are well known in the art. These articles, which are often disposable, are capable of absorbing and retaining fluids and other bodily discharges. Some absorbent articles, such as pull-on type absorbent articles, include a central absorbent member and side panels extending from and interconnecting respective front and back regions of the absorbent member forming a waist assembly.
Some known absorbent articles include liquid impermeable side panels to prevent liquid discharged by a wearer from leaking through the side panels. Such side panels can be impervious to water vapor as well as liquid. Side panels that are impermeable to both liquids and water vapor can cause the absorbent article often to feel hot and clammy to the wearer, especially after a bodily discharge. Furthermore, the lack of permeability to both liquid and water vapor can cause irritation to the skin of the wearer around the waist. In addition to concerns over skin wellness, liquid impermeable side panels often lack aesthetic and tactile qualities desired in absorbent articles.
From a product standpoint, an absorbent article in the diaper pants format can give an impression of being too stuffy and bulky to a caregiver because the diaper pant is in an enclosed form with the exception of the waist and leg openings. In addition, there can be 20 to 30 high-tension elastics embracing the waist area, which add to the perception of stuffiness. These issues with the use of diaper pants are especially unfavorable to babies living in hot and humid countries where excessive sweating can lead to many health and skin issues.
Diaper pants, due to their relatively short history, have not changed much with respect to visual differences around the waist panel. Prior art examples offer a very similar look and function around the waist, notably a typical double-layer system with waist elastics being sandwiched between outer material and inner material using adhesive.
In addition, efforts to deliver better breathability around the waist area have merely focused on changing the material type of waist panel. For example, using apertured material (i.e., those that have tiny holes) has been explored consistently, but the level of improvement is still limited by the double-layer system.